A Scientology-backed tutoring program looks to expand in the Houston area

Project CALL was started seven years ago by Fort Bend dentist Willis Pumphrey. According to a Web site that posts excerpts from the Scientology magazine Freewinds, Pumphrey has been a Scientologist since at least 1996.

Pumphrey did not return phone calls from the Press, so it's impossible to tell if he found Scientology the way some dentists have: through a church-affiliated consulting firm called Sterling Management. The Los Angeles Times reported in a series of articles that for years Sterling has targeted dentists and chiropractors, inviting them to seminars where they learn Hubbard's keys to business management. In turn, many of these professionals joined the church.

After holding workshops in various locations for years, Project CALL moved into the strip mall in 2002. Since then, Edwards says, he's helped hundreds of kids improve their grades. He's well aware of the debates over Scientology, and hesays he's careful to avoid discussing Scientology matters during the tutoring.

Norman says Scientology is misunderstood.

"I am very wary of, very aware of, and very overexaggerated about the separation of church and state,"Edwards says over the phone. "I have no problem with that policy. I think it should be that way Applied Scholastics was formed so that this study technology could be used by people of any religion, or of no religion."

Moreover, he says, study technology works -- mostly because it demands parental involvement. Overcrowded public schools mean even the best teachers can't reach all of their students, he says. Parents need to offer crucial one-on-one time. Edwards points to Applied Scholastics studies that show study technology has been successfully implemented in schools around the world.

"You can blame schools and you can blame teachers, but that's not been my experience," he says. "The problem is that, frankly, parents are leaving the education of their children to the schools, and it's really their job."

Juanita Copley, an associate professor and chair of the University of Houston's College of Education, was not aware of study technology. But when explained the approach of mass, gradient and misunderstoods, she said they are just different names for major concepts that have been around for years.

"If they're implemented correctly, I think those are probably good educational ideas," she says. "They've been around forever, and I use them in public education. I haven't heard any uniqueness there."

As the spokesperson for Austin's Church of Scientology, Cathy Norman has an unenviable job. The church receives mostly negative media attention, as a result of what Norman and other Scientologists say is a push by the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association and drug companies to paint Scientologists as wackos.

In her 27 years with the church, Norman has worked her way up to "OT-Five" level. Until OT-Three data turned up in an ex-Scientologist's court case in the 1980s, most members had no idea that 75 million years ago, Xenu the evil spacelord banished all beings to Teegeeack (now called Earth), piled them up around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs.

Norman says the tale of Xenu, and other stories, are taken out of context. She says the "make money" quotation, for example, is just one bit of "thousands of pages of administrative directives" -- it is about keeping the church financially stable, not just about recruitment.

But Norman says that throughout history, groups that challenged conventional thought have been persecuted or ridiculed. Sixty years ago, shock therapy and lobotomies were acceptable medical treatments. History is rife with allegedly overzealous groups who, years later, are vindicated. Scientology, she says, might just be ahead of its time. (Norman speaks only for the church, and is not a spokesperson for Applied Scholastics, Project CALL or any other church-affiliated group.)

Scientologists are so wary of contemporary medicine that to progress up the ladder of levels, they must sign waivers allowing their peers to intervene if they become mentally or physically incapacitated. The waiver allows the person to be isolated from friends and family and kept under 24-hour watch. It was created following the death of a mentally unstable church member who had been locked in a church-owned Florida hotel room for 17 days.

The depth and complexity of Scientology's concepts are so different from Judeo-Christian thought that they are difficult for outsiders to grasp, Norman says. There's no Old Testament narrative to sink your teeth into.

"It's not a story like that," she says. "It's a philosophy" -- one with applicable principles, she adds.

However, the Scientology philosophy may be hindering the tutorial program's progress in the Houston area.

Edwards had hoped that a proposed grant from Alief ISD's Smith Elementary would open the door for him to deliver monthly workshops to parents. School officials are looking to team up with a nonprofit in order to gain the grant that would bolster their onsite parent-learning center.

Principal Helen Wilk said she initially was unaware of the program's ties to Scientology. She stressed that the proposed grant would not include the use of any study-technology books in the school -- it would be limited to having Edwards speak to parents about helping their kids study.

However, late last week, school officials dropped Edwards from contention for the grant. Their decision: Utilizing a method related to Scientology could violate the separation of church and state.